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Deborah Warren

About Deborah

East/West Literary Agency, Inc. is, purposely, a boutique agency, to facilitate hands-on, personalized service and attention to our authors and their books. E/W represents a wide range of #1 NYT, #1 PW, IndieBound, USA Today, WSJ, and Amazon best-selling and best-illustrated books, Newbery, Coretta Scott King, Pura Belpre and Geisel medalists, as well as Andre Norton, Gelett Burgess, Children’s Choice, Parents’ Choice, Prism, Audie, Green Earth and Crystal Kite award-winners and nominees.

Deborah Warren founded E/W in 2000, after 17 years at Harcourt, and has a strong background in sales and marketing. She’s a strategist, incorporating long-term goals to help E/W clients not only grow a career, but to flourish within that career. With over 35 years’ of experience in the publishing industry, and over 16 years at the helm of the Agency, Deborah not only represents authors and illustrators of picture books including Jim Averbeck (One Word for Sophia), Anna Dewdney (of the Llama Llama franchise), Kimberly and James Dean (of the Pete the Cat franchise), Gianna Marino (Night Animals) and Antoinette Portis (Best Frints in the Whole Universe), she represents authors and illustrators—both debut and established--in the board book, concept, novelty, multicultural, non-fiction, middle-grade and young adult markets.

Deborah’s looking to fall in love with character-driven stories with heart, enhanced by a hook, told in a unique, fresh or distinctive way. Her sweet spots: short, quirky picture books and smartly layered, memorable and insightful MG and YA fiction. And she LOVES finding debut talent – in fact, it’s a bit of a specialty for the Agency.

As an example, we're thrilled to have helped launch and nourish (among others) the careers of authors Kwame Alexander, whose debut MG, The Crossover (HMM) was awarded the 2015 Newbery Medal and the 2015 Coretta Scott King Honor; Dave Butler, whose debut MG, The Kidnap Plot, the first in a trilogy, has recently been released by Knopf/RH; NYT-bestselling Alethea Kontis, and her debut YA Fantasy novels launched by the YALSA nominated and Gelette Burgess Award winner Enchanted; and author/illustrator Sarah Aspinall, whose debut picture book, Penguins Love Colors, is slated for publication from Blue Sky Press/Scholastic, along with the companion volume, Penguins Love Their ABC’s.

Query Instructions

While we are dedicated to our established stable of author and illustrators, we are selectively open to new talent – both published and debut. That said, we mold our client list from the many hundreds of submissions we receive each month, and the process is both subjective and based on the focused direction of the Agency. Most of our clients come to us through exclusive referral.

Unless you are referred to us by an existing client, at the current time – based on the high volume of queries – we are closed to unsolicited queries or submissions for the near future. If you are interested in submitting after that time, please adhere to the following guidelines:

*The most productive query will include a marketing "handle" or description of your book in sound bites that are clear, compact and commercial along with a "jacket flap" summary.  Sell us, don't just tell us!  Include your credentials, any publishing history, and how you were referred to us; if you are querying several other agencies simultaneously, we ask that you mention this in your query letter.

 *If you are a novelist, you may include the first three (3) chapters of the work; please do not submit the entire work unless specifically requested.

*If you are a picture book writer, you may include two (2) manuscripts; please do not submit any additional manuscripts unless specifically requested.

*If you are an illustrator, please include information regarding website portfolio links, if applicable; otherwise, attach a limited sampling of pieces; please do not send original artwork under any circumstance; we do not take responsibility for damage or loss of any original artwork that may be sent to us.

*If additional work is requested following the query letter, we prefer exclusive consideration of the requested work for one (1) month.

*Unsolicited e-mail query letters or submissions may not be responded to. While we have always striven to provide the courtesy of a response to all queries, you will hear back from us only if we're interested; we're not responsible for manuscripts submitted without regard to this policy, which supersedes any information listed in writers' guides or on other websites.

You'll be best served by an agent/agency who feels as passionate about the Work as you do--a necessary requisite of the book's best advocate–and we hope that'll be us!

Address

1158 26th Street
Suite 462
Santa Monica, CA 90403

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